


made a mistake (shoulda never tried)

by spock



Category: Sex Education (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, M/M, Missing Scenes, Pining, Pre-Canon, Slice of Life, Time Skips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-15
Updated: 2019-01-15
Packaged: 2019-10-10 09:47:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17423564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spock/pseuds/spock
Summary: Whenever Adam’s alone he can look for Eric, knowing that Eric will see him, and it’s like Adam isn’t alone anymore.





	made a mistake (shoulda never tried)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [milkandhoney](https://archiveofourown.org/users/milkandhoney/gifts).



Adam’s up at five in the morning, same as his dad. He lays in bed for as long as he can manage, until his mom pokes her head in and warns that he won’t have time to eat if he continues with his lie-in.

She waves at them from the door as he and his father pull out of the driveway, heading off Moordale for the first day of term. It’s Adam’s first day, something he’s been dreading since he was in primary, when in Year 3 he’d finally been able to understand that his father, who had always made a point of impressing onto Adam that he’d never been as good as his sister, was not only a tyrant at home but also at his work as well. That one day Adam would be trapped with him in both places, for all hours of the day, with no escape.

There’s no one else at school when they arrive, besides some of the newly hired tutors, and the cleaners. Adam roams the halls until the clock rolls over into a decent hour and the first of the more pathetic students start to arrive; he hurries back into a storage closet to hide, not wanting to give anyone the impression that the headmaster’s son is anything close to an academic.

He spins and spins in a spare desk chair that’s been sat in the corner, smoking, until the clock finally goes past the hour and he figures that most everyone’s started to show up. The hallway is full of other kids, all of them clustered off into little groups, pairs and triads talking and laughing with one another. Seems to Adam that everyone’s been this way since nursery, spotting their best friends as if they’d been wearing a badge and sticking to them like it’s their job.

Adam had missed the memo, apparently, and there was no making up for lost time in these matters. A loud laugh comes echoing down the hallway and Adam turns to look and see where it’s coming from. There’s a boy giggling his head off, far too loud, and Adam’s embarrassed for him, even if he doesn’t seem bothered himself. He’s got on high waisted jeans that distract Adam’s gaze around his crotch in a way Adam doesn’t care to think too much about. The shirt he’s wearing is so bright that it’s nearly as loud as loud as his laughter is. He’s talking to another boy and Adam just sort of — stares.

“Oh,” the boy says. He’s looking up at Adam, who hit puberty two summers past and shot up like a weed, as if he’d been in need of another thing in his life to make him different from the rest of them. Adam doesn’t remember walking over, getting this close. “Hello?

He can’t actually bring himself to speak; isn’t sure what he’d say even if he could. He has no idea what he’s doing. Walking over was a mistake.

The boy’s friend isn’t much help, inching away from the both of them as if Adam can’t see what he’s doing, and as if his friend isn’t throwing him betrayed looks from the corner of his eye.

“Are you here to, like, ” the boy licks his lips, eyes darting around the hallway behind Adam before flittering back up at Adam’s face, “rob me?”

 _Mint_ , Adam thinks, and then he’s thrusting the heel of his palm hard against the boy’s chest, jolting him into the lockers at his back. “Your mum pack you a lunch?” he asks.

 

⇣

 

Adam’s forced to sit in the front row during presentations and recitals so that his dad can keep an eye on him. It makes Adam want to die, mostly, since anything remotely official-sounding at the school means that his father forces him into a suit, and all of Adam’s suits match his father’s. He doesn’t go so far as to insist Adam sit next to him, thank god, but all that means is that Adam’s on his own, bored out of his mind stuck between two nobodies as he listens to the lower school’s band stumble their way from one song into the next.

The main highlight is that up on stage Eric’s in the front row as well, giving Adam something to look at. He’s dressed demurely compared to his usual, done up in a smart green suit, but given that all the other boys are in black, he stands out anyway. There’s something strange going on along the inseam of his trousers though, almost like —

“Has the kid on the trombone got a boner?” he asks the girl sat next to him, cutting off her whisperings to the friend at her other side.

“No,” she gasps, getting excited.

“At his leg,” Adam says, raising his hand to point Eric out. “Right there.”

She squints at Eric and then laughs, turning back to her friend to whisper rather loudly about what Adam’s noticed. The friend twists around to whisper to someone behind her, and then the news is off. Adam settles back into his seat, smirking mildly, eyes staying on Eric.

After what feels like an age and a half, the event finally comes to an end and the band files off the stage. His father is stood by the stairs with the music teacher, shaking their hands and congratulating them. Adam wonders over and stalks up behind Eric, dropping a hand onto his shoulder. His fingers accidentally slip beneath Eric’s collar, fingertips touching his skin. It’s warm, soft. Adam’s hands are big enough that his fingers dip down onto Eric’s chest, and he can feel that his skin is smooth, no hair there like what Adam’s got.

“Music what does it for you?” Adam asks, speaking into Eric’s ear. “Huh, Tromboner?”

Eric’s whole body trembles; Adam can feel it under his hand. He turns to look up at Adam over his shoulder, his mouth hanging open a little. “What?”

He places his other hand at Eric’s waist, turning him a little. Eric’s shoulder bumps into Adam’s chest. “Your dick,” Adam says, “was hard.” The colour drains from Adam’s face, his skin going ashen, though he doesn’t pull away from Adam.

Adam glances down and sees that thick line is still bulging at his leg. “Is hard,” he corrects.

 

⇣

 

The thing about school is that it’s social.

Adam isn’t social. This fundamental disconnect sees that the endless hours of downtime weigh on him; nobody to talk to in the hallways between classes, before or after school, when the teachers piss off to grade their marks and leave them to work on their own in pairs.

Adam has literally never been a part of a pair in his life. The kid he’s sat next to in Chemistry doesn’t so much as meet Adam’s eye, head practically pressed to the table as he focuses on getting their worksheets done.

So Adam comes up with what amounts to his own rituals; spotting Eric each morning the way other kids do their friends, accosting him by the bike parking or at his locker. Stealing Eric’s lunch, small conversations shared between them as he does, almost the same as what the other boys do, chatting with their friends before lessons start.

There’s nobody to smile at Adam when he passes them in the hallway, but Eric flinching away is almost as good.

Eric’s always aware of Adam, is always looking for him. Adam doesn’t mind that it’s because Eric’s scared — at least it means that Adam isn’t invisible to someone. That he can make Eric feel something. That Eric isn’t indifferent to him.

Adam’s father likes to keep him busy during free periods, giving Adam detention over the slightest thing so that his son can’t argue out of it. Adam quickly devours the sandwiches he pilfers off Eric and then picks up bin bags, brooms, a consortium of menial tasks meant to consume his lunch hour so that he can’t get himself into trouble. Everyone’s too scared to take the piss out of him for it, and so Adam moves around them like a ghost. Until he gets close to Eric, who always notices him, like Adam’s the one thing he’s always on the lookout for.

The rare times Adam hasn’t been conscripted into servitude, he sits by himself in the cafeteria, playing with his phone. After a while he’ll scope out the room and pick out where Eric’s sitting.

It’s like Eric’s got a second sense for him, the way he always manages to glance up right as Adam’s looking at him, their eyes locking. Eric looks away, spooked, but Adam doesn’t bother to hide his staring. Every once in a while Eric will look his way again, checking to see if Adam’s still watching. He always is. It’s almost like Adam’s next to him, this way.

Whenever Adam’s alone he can look for Eric, knowing with a certainty that doesn’t extend to any other aspect of his life that Eric will see him, and suddenly Adam isn’t alone anymore. Eric’s like that.

 

⇣

 

News gets around Adam’s got a man’s dick. The girls and some of the boys titter around him about it, give him a few backpats and cheeky glances in the showers, but nobody ever actually shows interest in him or his dick beyond the abstract.

It’s honestly fine by Adam, he’s gotten quite used to handling himself.

His father collects his phone each day after he’s gotten home, and so there’s nothing for Adam to do besides his coursework. Which he does not do, instead getting online and researching all the different ways men can get off. So much of porn has to do with women, and Adam hasn’t got a vagina to tend to or tits that he can stroke himself off with — body far too long and inflexible to do so even if he did have them.

Gay stuff, though, has twice the amount of dicks for him to learn from, and something about watching it always helps him get off quicker than when he fumbles alone in the dark on his own with nothing but his imagination. Likely helps to keep him focused, or something.

Adam watches men with big dicks handle themselves with a sense of authority, like they know what they’re doing, and tries to absorb some of that in himself. Pornstars never seem shy or unsure, even when they’re pretending to be; their confidence in themselves, in their skin, reminds him of Eric, a little. Adam wants a piece of that for himself.

Except one day his dad almost walks in on Adam during his research and Adam can’t stand to think what would have happened if he’d actually had his dick out, or if he hadn’t managed to slap the shell of his laptop closed.

He lays off masturbating for a while and starts offering to walk mum’s dog to pass the time instead, anything to get him out of the house until minutes before his curfew is up and he’s forced to go back inside.

Kyle, a boy from school, has a dog of his own, and sometimes they run into one another while Adam walks Madam. He’s something of a laugh, though they haven’t got much in common, and Kyle’s got plenty of other friends. He’s also got a lot of older brothers, apparently, and doesn’t see Adam’s shoving him around as a reason to avoid him.

They don’t talk much during the school day, but sometimes when they pass in the hallway they’ll have a quick chat. He doesn’t mind when Adam roughhouses him during their free period, and he’s started to teach Adam how to ride a skateboard.

Adam’s starting to think he’s getting somewhere, becoming normal, because not long after he’s started to build some bridges with Kyle, a girl pokes her head up from the gossiping masses to ask him out on a date.

Aimee’s right keen on getting to his dick, says she’s never had one as big as the rumor’s claim Adam’s to be, which of course is why his traitorous cock decides to develop a _problem_ , such as it is.

Hundreds of hours of his life spent waking all by his lonesome, and now that he’s finally got someone to stick it in, it decides that it isn’t all that interested.

 

⇣

 

It’s — annoying. Annoying that Eric’s got a dad that clearly loves him, even though Eric’s so different. Adam’s father has never given him the time of day, not even back during the times when Adam used to try.

Annoying that Adam’s spent the whole dance not minding that he hasn’t got a date, waiting for Eric to show up so that he wouldn’t feel as alone. He sits quietly and finishes up his fag as he watches Eric and his dad say kind things to one another, waiting for them to be finished so that Eric will turn around, notice Adam, maybe nervously compliment the way Adam looks in his suit in the hopes that Adam won’t say something mean about what he’s wearing in return. Whatever Eric’s got on is wild, even for him, but he still looks nice in it. The way he’s done up his face is bright and colourful even in the dark of the night, and Adam can’t imagine how much time it must have taken.

Eric walks right past him, not missing a stride, the first time he’s ever done that, and it’s — annoying.

 

⇣

 

Later, sat there on his own as he watches everyone else have a good time around him, he gets mad at himself. Aimee’s dancing with her new triangle on legs. She’s the living, breathing manifestation of his one shot at being normal that hadn’t done anything for him but backfire; him being on the verge of being shipped off to some military academy, whatever reputation he might've cobbled together having been stripped away in favor of him being a sex pervert, Kyle having dropped him and then taken up with Aimee for that short while as if their friendship hadn’t meant anything at all to him, and now this new tosser having transferred in and fitting in at Moordale without missing a step, making friends, getting himself a girlfriend — _Adam_ ’s girlfriend, who had told Adam that all their problems stem back to him, as if he hadn’t already been quite aware — and otherwise doing all the things Adam’s never been able to do, even though he’s lived here the whole of his life.

And now even Eric’s outgrown him, Adam all but invisible to him.

It’s easy to go after the triangle. Even easier to take his father’s face between his hands and finally tell him that he hates him, the memory of the tenderness between Eric and his father making the words sit like ash on his tongue.

Eric sees him, then, and Adam wishes he didn’t.

 

⇣

 

There isn’t a chance in hell that Adam’s going home. He disappears into one of the overflow rooms and makes a bed for himself on a couch, one last moment to himself before his life’s _officially_ officially over.

He’s still so — annoyed. Hurt, wounded, upset, rejected, _annoyed_. The look Eric gave him after Adam had let his father go keeps running through his mind. Adam doesn’t even know what to call that expression, isn’t even sure he likes it. He’s never not liked a look Eric’s given him before. The night’s been full of firsts, and not a one of them good. Adam’s pretty much finished, not a doubt in his mind that his dad isn’t currently ironing out his transfer right then, office hours be damned. His dad’s always told him that it pays to have connections.

If Adam thinks about any of this a moment longer he’s due to cry. He undoes the fly of his suit trousers and shoves his hand into his pants, playing with himself. He thinks about how confident Eric had been, how close their faces were after Eric had finally been the one to step into Adam’s space for once. He’s got nice eyes, bright even amongst all the shit he puts on his face.

Adam’s sort of a coward. It’s why he let Eric think he was bullying him that first time they’d spoken, and it’s why he’s used it as an excuse to touch Eric whenever he likes, except for in the ways he’d like to the most, ever since. His dick’s hard now, an ache that he’ll sate, so much easier to deal with than any of the other fucking feelings rattling around instead his mind just then.

It isn’t as if he’s got anything left to lose. Might as well indulge himself.


End file.
